Let's start out with a little game of "Spot the Differences." The above previews are all the exact same message: this blog post, in fact. Posts 1 and 2 were copied from Word, while 3 and 4 were copied from Word Pad. The first two are preview only, 1) in Google Chrome and 2) in Internet Explorer. Did you spot the stray bullet numbers? The second set were samples that I emailed. 3) is what I saw using Outlook, while 4) was what I saw in Gmail. Do you see the sides of my Outlook email? Me neither.

Technology can be frustrating, especially when things don't work. And when we need help, we, as users, need to contact the "computer geeks" to get answers. Sometimes talking to a geek can leave you even more confused than when you began!

Since I now work at a software company, I've started to understand the computer geeks. I thought this was valuable information to share with other non-geeks. For your enjoyment and reading ease, here are some basics about HTML email:

1)Emails are written in a language called HTML so that all email clients (Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, etc) can read them. Unfortunately, in order for all clients to read them, they have to be written in a very simple, very limited form of HTML. This is why your email can’t do cool things, like your webpage can.

2)Every email client reads and displays emails differently, so if you send a proof to yourself and open it using Gmail, don’t be surprised if it looks different to those using Outlook. The Mailout Interactive system is designed to make sure the emails look the best across all email clients, but it isn’t infallible. There will always be differences (and we find Outlook to be one program that likes to point out those differences.)

3)Speaking of our system, we try to make it as user-friendly as possible. Unfortunately, some things that seem simple can cause major problems. Take formatting, for example. If you type your article in Word, and then copy and paste it over, it will bring a lot of unwanted HTML formatting along and make your article look strange. It’s best to write your article in something like Word pad (because Word pad doesn’t add any formatting), paste it into our system, and edit it within our system.

4)SPAM filters are tricky. They may not filter your email one day, and then filter it the next. This is because spammers are always changing their tactics. Email clients have to update their tactics as well. Read our post on SPAM (not the luncheon meat) for more information.

5)How we track email readership. Justin did a great job of explaining email tracking in a previous post. He explains how an unconfirmed read doesn’t necessarily mean the mailout wasn’t read, and how this information is still useful.

I hope I have been able to demystify some of the 1s and 0s that have been boggling us non-techies for years, but as always, give us a call (877 260-6005) or email (info@mailoutinteractive.com) to get your questions answered… in plain English.